


brass-bound

by ssstrychnine



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), mad max - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 07:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5657776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>capable is beauty and angharad is the beast</p>
            </blockquote>





	brass-bound

They say there is a beast in the woods, but Capable does not believe in fairy tales. More likely it is a bear, or a man big with anger, or even just the wind rattling at the trees. Capable thinks there are probably worse things in the town itself, the cobbled streets have always frightened her more than the imaginations of people who live on the edges of a dark wood. There are men big with anger just down the street. There is wind that rattles against the corners of weather beaten houses.

“No one’s seen a bear here in twenty years,” she tells Cheedo, the youngest of her sisters, when she asks.

Capable is the eldest, Dag next, then Toast, and Cheedo is last with dimpled smiles. They are not sisters by blood but they are sisters by steel-strong love, and the rest of the town has almost stopped whispering about them. They came together like lost things do, tangled and frightened, and they live on the hill that looks down at the woods and at the town and Capable grows roses.

“They’re the same colour as your hair,” Dag murmurs, plucking a petal off a scarlet flower and holding it up to Capable’s ear.

“Her hair is bloodier,” says Toast, grinning savagely.

“Don’t you have someone else to bother?” Capable asks, without heat, and they smile and she is glad when they do not leave.

They make money from the things they grow. Capable grows roses and Dag grows vegetables and Toast makes small wooden boxes, carved with trees that grow along the hinges. Cheedo sets up their stall at the weekend markets and she wears her smile like armour and the town has almost forgotten them completely when Capable steals a rose.

She should not be in the woods, not really, because although she doesn’t believe in fairy tales and no one has seen a bear in twenty years, a forest can still be a dangerous place for a girl in linen with rose petal hands. But Cheedo is ill and Capable will not go to the town doctor, who has sticky hands and a permanent leer, and the woods are the only other option. There is a woman there, in a fall down cottage, a woman with one arm and the fiercest eyes in the world, and Capable knocks on her door, pulling herself steady, right down to her heels.

The woman does not say anything to Capable, just listens as she lists symptoms. There is a man sitting in a shadowed corner with a dog at his feet and his eyes closed. The woman mixes green things in a pot of hot water.

“You’ll leave this forest changed,” the man says, without opening his eyes, startling Capable so badly she knocks her elbow against the wall.

“Is that good or bad?” she asks him, but he doesn’t speak again, and Capable takes the tonic she is given, and hurries back the way she came.

The trees seem different in half light. Their shadows stretch out long and thin and the leaves seem sparse on their branches. Perhaps it is that which makes the rose so much brighter. A perfect flower, white as snow, wrapped up in a thorny, tangled vine. Capable thinks of Dag when she sees it, clear cut and prickly, and she takes the flower and a cutting for her garden. She has not walked far when a rumbling comes from the dark.

“You think you can take my roses, thief?” asks the voice; just a voice, just a patch of darkness Capable can’t focus on. Just the smell of sand and the green cold of moss. Just a voice like the screaming of glass on glass.

“I did not think it was owned,” says Capable, pushing her hair out of her eyes, holding the rose out in front of her, her hands trembling badly. The air feels hot and dry like the moment before a lightning strike and she badly wants to see her sisters one last time before it hits. “I took it for my sister,” she whispers.

“You took it for yourself,” says the darkness scornfully. “It must be paid for.”

“I’ll give it back,” says Capable, thinking that there is not a beast in the woods, that fairy tales aren’t real. “I’ll give it back and not come here again.”

“No,” says the voice. “You will keep the rose and I will think of another way you can pay me for it.”

“I cannot spin gold from straw,” she says desperately. “I cannot bring you the heart of a girl.”

Something in the silence that follows this makes Capable think that the thing in the dark is surprised and Capable’s hand tightens on the rose and the thorns bite through the handkerchief she wrapped it in. She hopes that whatever this darkness takes from her, it is quick and painless.

“I would like your company,” says the voice finally, and then it is Capable’s turn to be surprised.

“My company,” she repeats through numb lips.

“A month of your time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Live with me, red girl, for a month, to pay for my flower.”

“An expensive rose,” whispers Capable, and the thing actually laughs.

She goes home with the white rose in her hand and a promise that she will return the next day. She thinks about what she will tell her sisters and it does not worry her that they will be alone. They have survived without her before. She worries more about what this thing will ask of her, when she goes to it. Many things can be meant by companionship. It does not occur to her to dishonour her promise.

She gives Dag the rose and Cheedo the tonic and she tells them what she has agreed to do. Cheedo cries because she is sick and because she is lovely. Dag screws up her face and twirls the rose in her hands. Toast starts to shout.

“I never would have picked you to be the thief in the family,” she mutters when she has calmed down a little.

“It is a beautiful rose,” Dag says, trailing the petals across her face.

“It’s ugly,” snaps Cheedo, rubbing the tears from her face. “I told you there were things in the woods.”

Capable does not take much with her. Two dresses, a brush for her hair. One of Toast’s boxes full of dried roses from her garden for the smell of home. Cheedo kisses her on the cheek and Dag braids her hair and Toast hugs her quickly, just once, an arm pulled tightly around her waist.

 

It seems a longer journey than it had the day before. The road seems different and the trees seem different. She walks for most of the day, a trip that should only take an hour, and she comes across a palace before she comes across the roses. It is large and brick and the grounds are untamed and wild. There are vines creeping into the windows and cracking the bricks. A ruin of such magnificence that Capable presses a hand to her lips to keep her silence.

There is nothing to suggest that she is in the right place but she feels it so keenly that she cannot leave it behind. She walks up the steps to the front door and it creaks open as she raises her hand to the knocker. It is a great ring of brass hanging from a lion’s mouth and she touches it before stepping inside, rubbing her fingers together to feel the weight of rust on her skin. She walks inside and it is cold and dark and a chandelier of a thousand candles bursts into life as she walks under it. Capable does not believe in fairy tales, but nothing else would explain fire springing from the air like it is born from it.

“I don’t like surprises,” she calls out to the air.

“Then you’ll have a hard month,” comes a voice from behind her, and Capable turns around.

She had not tried to imagine what the dark thing looked like, but it is a surprise nonetheless. A girl stands there, tall and straight-backed. A girl dressed in rotting finery with dirty feet and her arms raw with scratches. A girl with matted hair and her fingernails too long and her skin drawn so tightly across her bones that looking at her face makes Capable’s teeth hurt.

“You’re just a girl,” says Capable, frowning.

“No such thing as _just_ a girl,” says the girl and then Capable sees the monster of her. There is a creature in this girl, something with teeth and claws, and she can see it clinging to her like mist on the ground. A different sort of shadow.

“Is this your castle?” Capable asks, looking away from her to the walls, dying tapestries hanging from rotten wood.

“Aren’t you frightened?” the girl asks, coming closer, tilting her head like what she is seeing is fascinating. The monster gnashes its teeth.

“Yes,” says Capable quietly. “But you’re not what I thought you would be.”

“You thought I would have a lion’s head and a serpent’s tongue,” says the girl, and the monster licks its lips.

“Maybe,” Capable admits.

“What’s your name, thief?”

“Capable,” she replies. “Do you have a name?”

“I used to. You can call me Splendid.”

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this for the lovely ourfuriosa on tumblr. i hope to finish it soon. thank you for reading!


End file.
